New Haven Independent

Buskey (pictured) lives at 312 Greenwich Ave., a rundown house that has changed hands, at least on paper, an awful lot. (More on that later.) She has never met the out-of-town landlord who has owned the house since last May. She doesn’t know where to find him. She said he has her $1,100 security deposit — money she needs to move, something she has been ordered to do.

Rafael Ramos said he doesn’t know where to find the landlord, Joseph Barros, either. Ramos is city government’s deputy housing code director, in the Livable City Initiative (LCI) bureau. LCI has been paying for repairs and heating oil for Buskey and the house’s other tenant. Now the city has a lien on Barros’s house.

Ramos said a marshal he hired to serve papers on the landlord was told Barros is in jail, not at his last known address.

But a few quick calls by a reporter found Barros and his fiancé/ partner reachable. They claimed they were duped by a realtor, then the tenants, and are now in a worse hole than Buskey.

The saga of 312 Greenwich, in the Kimberly Square section of the Hill, reflects the perils and widespread social costs of out-of-towners seeking to “flip” rental properties in urban neighborhoods. It also reveals the limitations and Catch-22s of government and bureaucratic oversight of slumlords — as well as the odd paper trail often found on rental properties in poorer neighborhoods when they’re owned by out-of-towners.

The Tenants’ Version

Barros bought the house (pictured) last May for $180,000, according to city land records. Second-floor tenant Buskey and downstairs tenant Tasha (she didn’t wish to give her last name) said they’ve never met Barros. They said they were instructed to pay their rent to a local Citizens Bank branch. They said they have trouble reaching the landlord to call for repairs — calls they need to make often, especially in cold weather.

So they called Ramos at LCI instead. According to LCI records, the city paid more than $800 in January to get the furnace working again and to fill it. (Heat is supposedly included in the $1,100 monthly rent Buskey said she pays for the three-bedroom apartment she shares with her three sons.)

Ramos said the city has been unable to locate Barros. The city slapped a lien on the property. Ramos hired a Norwich-based state marshal to serve Barros with papers, including an order to make repairs. The marshal, Thomas J. Burke, went on Jan. 17 to Barros’ last known address, 13 Belleau St.

According to Ramos (pictured), Burke reported back that Barros’ wife said Barros was in jail. That was last month. (Burke, reached Tuesday, said he doesn’t remember the case. The state corrections department has no record of a current or recent inmate named Joseph Barros, according to a spokeswoman.)

Meanwhile, Gwen Buskey said she has to move. She said Section 8 — the federal program that subsidizes her rent — ordered her to because the house failed a code inspection. But she said she can’t move, because she lacks the money for a security deposit. She has never received her $1,100 deposit back on 312 Greenwich, she said.

“We’re going through a whole battle now because of this property,” said Buskey, who is also on workmen’s compensation after an injury on her job. “We’re left with a big mess.”

The Landlords’ Side

The phone listing for 13 Belleau St. is under a last name different from Barros’. A call there turned up his mother. She said Jojo doesn’t live there anymore. She promised to have him call back a reporter.

Barros’ fiancé, Carlica Gonzalez, called back, with a tale of woe of her own.

Gonzalez, 21, said she and Jojo bought the house to make some extra money. A realtor steered them to the Greenwich Avenue house. She and Jojo, who’s 25, knew nothing about New Haven or the neighborhood, she said. They believed that the house was a good investment property; they hoped to sell it for a profit. Indeed, the previous owned had purchased it for $42,000 before re-selling it six years later to Barros for $180,000.

“We were trying to do a flip and fix it up. We had no idea it was a bad neighborhood,” Gonzalez claimed. From the start, she said, the tenants would call and complain about conditions at the house, but never paid any rent.

“I don’t know what they did to the furnace, if they ruined it,” she said. “When we bought the house it was fine. There was always something they needed done. The stove didn’t work one day. Then it did. People were selling drugs in the back. We put up a ‘No Trespassing’ sign.”

The bank recently notified her and Barros that it is taking back the house, Gonzalez said. Without rent money, they couldn’t make payments on the mortgage, she said. “We’re struggling. We just had a baby. We’re just trying to dig out of this hole. We’ve lost the house. His credit is [now] horrible.” Gonzalez said she has taken a job in a group home. Jojo lost his job as a laborer, but found another at Bob’s Furniture, where he was during the phone conversation Tuesday, according to Gonzalez.

Tenant Buskey sharply disputes Gonzalez’s account. She said she has faithfully paid her rent to an account in the downtown New Haven branch of CItizens Bank, as the landlord instructed her in an e-mail. She called both Gonzalez and Barros with complaints, she confirmed. “He told me he was coming down here. He never even went to the Section 8 office” to register as the new landlord, Buskey said. She said Barros and Gonzalez didn’t know what they were doing.

The Previous Landlord’s Story

The previous owner of 312 Greenwich did know what he was doing. He was an experienced investor in houses in the Fair Haven, Newhallville, and Hill neighborhoods.

The landlord, Andrew Esposito, lives in Northford. Buskey said he was a good landlord — always reachable and responsive.

But Esposito concluded it was too “tough” to make a financial go of buying, fixing up and reselling properties in rundown neighborhoods, he said Monday. He has been unloading all his New Haven properties, he said. “It’s too hard. The people are very transient. It’s a hard business. I’ve got one [property] left. It’s supposed to close.”

Technically, Esposito bought and resold the property several times. Here’s how the transactions unfolded, according to land records:

• On Aug. 16, 2000, a local lawyer and investor named Gabriel Cusanelli (pictured; click here for a recent Independent story about him) bought 313 Greenwich for $42,000.

• Cusanelli turned around six days later and quit-claimed the property to a limited-liability corporation called Suburban Associates, for $1. That LLC’s post-office box address is the same as Andrew Esposito’s. Esposito is listed in land records as its main member. Cusanelli and Esposito similarly transferred another property to each other for $1 in New Haven, at 212 Newhall St.

• On Jan. 12, 2001, Suburban Associates sold 312 Greenwich to Marlene Esposito, Andrew’s wife, for $85,000, according to the deed. Marlene, too, is listed as a member of Suburban Associates in the land records.

• On Dec. 10, 2003, the property was quit-claimed to Andrew for $1.

• On Jan. 9, 2004 Andrew quit-claimed the property to Suburban Associates for $1.

• On Oct. 21, 2004, the property was quit-claimed back to Andrew for $1.

• On Feb. 23, 2006, Andrew quit-claimed the property to Suburban Associates for $1.

• In March, 2005, Suburban quit-claimed it back to Andrew.

• On May 30, 2006, Andrew sold the house to Joseph Barros for $180,000.

Why all the transfers of ownership? Esposito said he thought it had to do with obtaining mortgages, but didn’t remember the details. He referred specific questions to his attorney, Lawrence Levinson.

Levinson (a former law partner of Gabriel Cusanelli) said Esposito remembered correctly. Whenever Esposito wanted to refinance the house, he needed to put it in his own name in order to obtain a mortgage, Levinson said. Mortgage companies insist on that. Indeed, land records show new mortgages coinciding with the quit-claims.

Then Esposito would return the property to the LLC’s ownership in order to limit his legal liability, Levinson said.

Is that OK with mortgage companies, if they want the property to be in a human’s, rather than an LLC’s, name in the first place?

“Technically, under most mortgages, it’s probably a default,” Levinson said. “But the banks don’t really care. It doesn’t affect” their ability to collect, because they retain a first mortgage in the name of the principal owner.